Microsoft provides updates for Visual Studio directly. I don't use Visual Studio, and in turn, never 2012. However, I'm sure there is a way to manually check for updates, typically located under the Help -> About... menu. There is several places to check for updates, but that's my best guess.

In regards to C++11 features, there are websites out there that provide an overview of all of the current compilers and the features they offer. It's possible that whatever feature you are trying to use is not yet supported by MSVC++ compiler. If you're looking to see if it provides C++11 features, there are some small code snippets to test it. I'll provide you with one (which is supported by almost every current compiler).

The above code uses the auto data type and a range based for loop, both features added to the C++11 standard. If you're really looking to test it out, I suggest looking at the functional library, random library, and lambda functions. There is a lot of stuff added in this feature, even including threading, that is hard to come up with an example for each, but you can always Google them and run a quick piece of code to see if you get errors.